Jan Wostyn, Director International Relations of Hutong School, will give you a bird's eye view of the fascinating Chinese language, zooming in on different aspects of a language which many Westerners believe to be the hardest language in the world, until they actually get started, and discover the surprisingly simplicity of Chinese compared to most European languages.
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Demystifying Mandarin - Learn Chinese by Hutong School
1. Demystifying Mandarin
by Hutong School
June, 2012
Jan Wostyn, Director International Relations
2. Overview
Part I: Facts and figures about Chinese
Part II: The Wonder of the Chinese Script
Part III: How to write Chinese
Part IV: Spoken Chinese
Part V: Chinese Grammar and Vocabulary
Part VI: Tips for learning Chinese
3.
4. Part I: facts and figures
What is Chinese? What is Mandarin?
Where is Chinese spoken?
Who learns Mandarin?
5. What is Mandarin?
Mandarin = official standard language of Chinese
Several Chinese „dialects‟ or „regionalects‟ exist, mostly spoken
in the South of China:
Most well-known: Cantonese (Hong Kong, Guangdong, Guangxi)
Other: Minnanhua (Fujian), Xiang (Hunnan), Wu (Shanghai,
Zhejiang)
In spoken form often mutually unintelligible
Difference between a language and a dialect?
“A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” (Max Weinrich)
Names for the Chinese language:
汉语 Hànyŭ 中文 Zhōngwén 普通话 Pŭtōnghuà
7. Where is Mandarin spoken
as a first language?
Mainland China (850 mio to 1.1 billion)
Younger generations all learn Mandarin at school, but will still speak
their dialect as well in the South
Official policy: “Promote Mandarin, protect dialects”
Older generations, especially in countryside, may never have learned
Mandarin and only master their own dialect
Taiwan: about 4-5 mio speak Mandarin as their first language, but
all Taiwanese learn Mandarin as official language
Singapore: Mandarin is one of the official languages
Overseas communities: usually migrated from the south, most
speak dialects, not Mandarin (large communities in South-East
Asia, notably Indonesia and Malaysia; smaller communities pretty
much anywhere in the world, see map)
9. Who learns Mandarin?
Non-Chinese minorities within China:
Tibetan, Uygur, Mongolians, etc…
Hong Kong & Macao:
Official language yet most speak it as 2nd language after Cantonese
Mandarin has clearly gained importance since 1997
In Korea and Japan, Mandarin may become as important or
even overtake English as a 2nd language
Many Koreans learn Chinese characters at school
Japanese use 1945 common Chinese characters (Kanji) lower
threshold to learning Chinese
Elsewhere:
Big increase in number of secondary schools offering Chinese in
France, Germany, USA, …
Chinese government pushes Confucius Institutes and Confucius
classrooms all over the globe
10. Part II: the wonder
of the Chinese script
When and why were characters invented?
Traditional versus simplified Chinese characters
How many characters are there?
Different types of Chinese characters
11. When and why were
Chinese characters invented?
Brief history of Chinese script:
2000 BC: proto-writing: decorative carvings with meaning
„Inventor‟ of script = Cang Jie under Yellow emperor
Oracle bone script, Shang dynasty (1766-1122 BC) = first
orthographic representation of language, not just pictures
Standardization of the writing system into the “Small Seal
Script” (小篆 Xiao Zhuan) by Qin Shihuang (221-207 BC), after
the Warring States Period.
Chinese is characterized by a large number of homonyms
Many identical sounds have very diverging meanings
The Chinese people could not have invented the alphabet, it
would have been useless to write down their language
13. Traditional versus simplified
Chinese
Although Mandarin is standardized in spoken form, there
are 2 different ways of writing it
Simplified characters:
Used in Mainland China
Introduced in 1956 by CCP
Mainly reduction of strokes
Also elimination of variants of same characters
Traditional characters:
Used in Taiwan, HK and Macao
15. How many Chinese characters
are there?
106.230: Yitizi Zidian (2004, Taiwan)
Includes also all kinds of variants of same character
54678: Hanyu Da Zidian (1989, PRC)
7000: Chart of Generally Utilized Characters of Modern Chinese
3500:Chart of Common Characters of Modern Chinese
2500 common characters
1000 less-than-common characters
Don‟t despair !
With 2500 characters you can read 97.97 %
With 3500 characters you can read 99.48 %
With only 900 characters, you can read 90% of newspapers !
Highest level of HSK requires 2600 characters (Level 6)
16. Types of Chinese characters
Pictograms = stylized representation of objects
Ideograms = expressing abstract ideas through form
Radical-phonetic compounds (80-90% of characters)
Radical: element that indicates meaning
About 200 radicals
Refer to „water‟ , „wood‟ , „hands‟ , etc…
Phonetic: element that indicates the pronunciation
Most phonetics are characters themselves as well
18. Examples of ideograms
人 -> 大 -> 天 person -> big -> heaven
本 -> 末 root versus top
女 + 子 = 好 woman + son = good !
女 + 宀 = 安 woman + roof = safe !
亻+ 木 = 休 man + tree = to rest !
亻+ 本 = 体 man + root = body
木 + 木 = 林 tree + tree = wood
木 + 木 +木 = 森 tree + tree + tree = a forest
19. Example of
radical – phonetic system
巴
爸
吧
把
芭
疤
钯
鲃
21. Part III: how to write Chinese?
The 8 basic strokes of Chinese writing
Basic stroke order rules
Writing direction
How to write Chinese digitally
23. Basic stroke order rules
1. Horizontal stroke (heng) before vertical
stroke (shu)
2. Left-leaning stroke (pie) before right-
leaning stroke (na)
3. From top to bottom
4. From left to write
5. From outside to inside and closing a
frame with the last stroke
6. Middle first, then both sides
For animated writing examples: see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Order.gif_stroke_order_images
24. Writing direction
Modern Chinese:
Left to right, top to bottom
Just like in Western language
Classical Chinese
Top to bottom
Right to left
25. How to write Chinese digitally
Most Chinese use pinyin to enter characters digitally
Pinyin = official transliteration system to write the pronunciation of
Chinese characters in Latin alphabet
For each pronunciation, all possible characters or character
combinations appear
Recognizing and choosing the correct character is all you need !
26. Part IV: spoken Chinese
The 4 tones
Do tones matter?
Some sounds are harder than others
28. Do tones matter?
Yes, because a different tone will imply a different meaning
Mā 妈 = mother -> Māma, usually bisyllabic
Má 麻 = hemp -> Dàmá : marihuana
Mă 马 = horse -> usually monosyllabic
Mà 骂 = to scold -> as a verb, will be preceded by subject and
following by direct object
However, in basic communication, the context and the
grammatical function will usually make clear what is meant,
even if the tone is not pronounced accurately
Make sure you know the tone of each character, but don‟t
worry about mistakes in the beginning. The feeling for the
melody will come step by step
29. Some sounds are
easier than others
Chinese has a relatively limited number of different
syllables
Standard pinyin only has about 400 possible syllables
Western language have a multitude of possible syllables
Most syllables are fairly easy to pronounce:
Māma, nĭ-hăo zhōng-guó, Shàng-hăi
Some syllables and syllable combinations require practice !
Jī qī xī zhī chī shī jū qū xū
Zì-xíng-chē zì-jĭ qí-shí sì-shí-sì qī-shí-qī
30. Part V: Chinese grammar
and vocabulary
The simplicity of Chinese grammar
What‟s different in Chinese grammar?
Chinese vocabulary: makes sense !
Counting in Chinese: no exceptions !
Months and days of the week
31. The simplicity of
Chinese grammar
No conjugations: each verb only has one form
No tenses
No cases
No plurals
No articles
No gender
No variation of adjectives by number or gender
Fixed sentence patterns, no inversion
Thanks to the Chinese characters, which are forms that never
change, all the form changes of European languages can be
omitted.
34. What is different in Chinese?
Particles or sentence patterns to express tenses
了 le -> used after verb to express completion or past
过 guo -> used after verb to express past experience
快要...了 kuài yào … le -> construction to express something that
is going to happen in the near future
Many other fixed structures that never change: some drilling does the
trick !
„Measure words‟ (or „Classifiers‟)
In English, some measure words exists such as „a cup of tea‟ , „a pair
of jeans‟, „a pinch of salt‟, ….
In Chinese, every word has such measure word
个 gè: generic measure words, can be used whenever you don‟t know
张 zhāng: for flat objects (e.g. sheet of paper, a table, …
座 zuò: for big heavy objects (e.g. a building, a mountain, …)
35. Chinese vocabulary: makes sense
The vast majority of Chinese words have only 2 syllables
They often combine basic meanings to form new words
Examples:
电脑 diàn-năo = Electricity + brain = ?
电话 diàn-huà = Electricity + words = ?
电视 diàn-shì = Electricity + to view = ?
变色龙 biàn-sè-lóng =Change + color + dragon = ?
长颈鹿 cháng-jĭng-lù = Long + neck + deer = ?
橄榄球 gănlăn-qiú = Olive + ball = ?
网球 wăng-qiú = Net + ball = ?
36. Chinese vocabulary:
hard made easy !
Many words in English have a Greek-Latin origin,
especially scientific words, which makes them sound
difficult and not readily understandable
Chinese uses characters that are 2000 years old, but which
have retained their basic meaning over time
Examples
五角大楼 wŭ-jiăo-dà-lóu = Five + corners + big + building = ?
安乐死 ān-lè-sĭ = quiet + happy + die = ?
交响曲 jiāo-xiăng-qŭ = to cross + to sound + musical piece = ?
37. Counting in Chinese
一 yī 一 yī 一 yī 一 yī 一 yī
二 èr 二 èr 二 èr 二 èr 二 èr
三 sān 三 sān 三 sān 三 sān 三 sān
四 sì 四 sì 四 sì 四 sì 四 sì
五 wŭ 万 五 wŭ 千 五 wŭ 百 五 wŭ 十 五 wŭ
六 liù 六 liù 六 liù 六 liù 六 liù
七 qī 七 qī 七 qī 七 qī 七 qī
八 bā 八 bā 八 bā 八 bā 八 bā
九 jiŭ 九 jiŭ 九 jiŭ 九 jiŭ 九 jiŭ
十 shí 十 shí 十 shí 十 shí 十 shí
No exceptions, every number is formed the same way
One additional „unit‟ = 万 wàn = 10.000
Only 13 different syllables needed to count from 1 to ….
Example: 85327 = 8*10.000 + 5*1000 + 3*100 + 2*20 + 7
= bā wàn wŭ qiān sān băi èr shí qī
No need to worry about French calculations like 96 = 4*20 + 16
38. Months and days of the week
January July 一月 yīyuè 七月 qīyuè
February August 二月 èryuè 八月 bāyuè
March September 三月 sānyuè 九月 jiŭyuè
April October 四月 sìyuè 十月 shíyuè
May November 五月 wŭyuè 十一月 shíyīyuè
June December 六月 liùyuè 十二月 shíèryuè
Monday Friday 星期一 xīngqīyī 星期五xīngqīwŭ
Tuesday Saturday 星期二 xīngqīèr 星期六xīngqīliù
Wednesday Sunday 星期三 xīngqīsān 星期天 xīngqītiān
Thursday 星期四 xīngqīsì
Once you can count till 10, you just need to learn the words
for week, month and heaven and you know all the months
and days of the week as well ! (13 different syllables)
39. Tips for learning Chinese
Always carry a small notebook
Write down characters you see a lot ask your teacher
Write down words or sounds you hear a lot ask your teacher
You will easily remember these characters and sounds as they are
connected to real-life situations
Separate learning spoken and written Chinese
Learn to speak those words that are used regularly in daily life, but
don‟t worry about the characters (yet)
Xièxie = thank you ! quite easy to say
谢谢 hard to write if this is one of your first characters, don‟t force
yourself ! Learn the components first
Learn to recognize and write simple characters first, even if they are
not commonly used in speech
口 kŏu = mouth easy to write, also radical in many other
characters, but rarely used as a word in conversations
木 mù = wood idem, common radical
40. Tips for learning Chinese (bis)
Make up stories about characters to memorize them
叫 jiào: to call or be called; my roommate was a fan of the football team Schalke
04 and looked at the character as ‟04‟. It was ridiculous, had nothing do to with it,
but he did remember
楼 lóu: building is a construction of wood (木) where a woman (女) is
cooking rice (米)
Use Chinese whenever and wherever you can, even if you feel you are
using the same words over and over again
Repeat 3 times 20‟ rather than once 1 hour
Don‟t worry about tonal mistakes in the beginning, but always make sure
you know the tone of each syllable
Read aloud whenever you read something
41. Don‟t worry,
anybody can learn Chinese !
And for every worry, there is a Chinese proverb anyway !
千里之旅,始于足下!
A journey of a 1000 miles starts with one step !
43. About Hutong School
Hutong School was founded in 2005 in order to provide Western students,
graduates and young professionals internships and Chinese language
courses in China.
Hutong School is the school of choice for anyone who wants to study
Chinese or find an internship in China.
Visit our website for more information:
www.hutong-school.com